28
Feb

News Brands Can Use

Consumer sentiment in February was at a three-year high, says a survey from Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan. It’s a stat that makes interesting news, but overall consumer sentiment is not actionable intelligence for most of us. It won’t help you decide how much of that new product to manufacture or how you can increase brand market share.

But there is a tool that gives businesses the intel they need to make the decisions that lift revenue, boost brand awareness, and manage online reputation: sentiment analysis. Sometimes called opinion mining, it analyzes speech in online conversations to determine the consumer’s attitude: positive, negative, or neutral.

Digitized sentiment analysis doesn’t work on its own however; it must work in tandem with experts who can analyze the dialogue. For example, is the comment “I love Cheesy Poofs” honest to goodness customer love or is it the sarcasm of an unsatisfied snacker?

The combination of sentiment analysis and human intelligence gives decision makers the news they need to make informed strategic decisions. What other social media monitoring tools do you use to tap into the voice of the customer (VOC)?